It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at
large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden
hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since first
use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical
wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has
accumulated for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip
and wire failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such
failures are often referred to as infant
mortality problems (or, occasionally, as sudden infant death syndrome). See
bathtub curve,
burn-in period.